Wandering through Target the other day, trying to find my wife and child, I passed by the dollar bins at the front by the checkstand.
Dollar DVDs?
Yup. Little one-off $1 DVDs with 3-5 TV episodes from old shows (Dragnet, The Rifleman, One Step Beyond), movie serials (Flash Gordon), or even a couple of old movies. For $1.
Frankly, for $1, even if it’s crap and disposable, it’s still hard to go wrong. I picked up five of them that looked moderately interesting, and if they give me an hour or two of background entertainment, it’s a fabulous deal.
This sort of thing is where TV show DVDs can and should be going. Any number of old series out there that would lend themselves to this treatment. No need for commentary tracks and other fanciness (for most shows, anyway) — a buck for a couple of hours of eps is a great price point, and if there’s a lot of interest you can look at the bonuses on a re-release.
On a related note, Margie forwards me an article from the NYT about cheap video downloads of classic TV series.
Looking for “The Fugitive?” Didn’t get enough “Eight Is Enough?” Would you like to “Welcome Back, Kotter” one more time? Warner Brothers is preparing a major new Internet service that will let fans watch full episodes from more than 100 old television series. The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4,800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.
WB plans on having some commercials (1-2 min. per half-hour episode), which would be annoying. More annoying is watching TV on my PC. I like having my PC and my TV active at the same time (as homework aficionados will appreciate), and keeping a little window up on my screen is not very convenient (one reason I don’t watch many movies while on the road).
I also think the price point for this is a bit high. $2 for a downloaded half-hour episode? Even for an hour-long one? That I can only watch once (or as long as I can store it)? That gets up into DVD-class prices, and I can watch those a lot more conveniently.
The fact is, a lot of these series costs are already recovered (Hollywood accounting practices notwithstanding). The actual costs for these services are therefore mostly “what the market can bear” — and I suspect that not only will this price point turn out to be too high, but I expect these services will also push down DVD prices as well.
As demonstrated at Target this weekend …
Sounds like a “mutated” version of the iTunes model. Does the same logic apply there (I don’t use it)? For example, a classical piece that takes up a whole CD…Beethoven’s Ninth, for example, is that “one song”? So I pay 1.99 for that or 1.99 for a three minute piece of bubblegum by Britney?
If they’re going to stick commercials into a download that I pay for, I have a feeling it is going to fail. Then they will claim it is all our fault for increasing piracy or some such rot.
Within reason, I don’t mind commercials. Though I’ve been spoiled by timeshifting and being able to FF through them. Still, I’m willing to work with folks on the price model, as long as we come to an agreement (in the marketplace) on the cost vs the benefit.
Conversely, if it cost $2.50 vs. $2 for a commercial-free version, that would probably be more attractive (and would garner more support from the market, I suspect).
I’ve picked up some of those. I’ve gotten some episodes of Jack Benny’s show, and a few old movies, such as “My Favorite Brunette.”
Unfortunately the Stan Laurel short, “Mud and Sand” (a parody of Valentino’s bullfighter flick, “Blood and Sand”) on the “Utopia” DVD is corrupt, and I can’t watch the entire thing. “Frell” is the word I believe you would use.